


Väinämöinen's Land

by Talimee



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Insight, Finnish Magic, Finnish Mythology - Freeform, Gen, Icelandic Magic, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, Trolls, Year 40, beasts - Freeform, rocky friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 09:06:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9228149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talimee/pseuds/Talimee
Summary: After Iceland has abandoned its isolation policy a delegation of skalds is send out to Saimaa to learn as much of the Finns and their world as possible. Things get complicated when one of the skalds is foisted onto independent Ensi and is determined to make friends with her.





	1. Saimaa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StellarJay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarJay/gifts).



> A giant amount of thanks goes to laufey and her invaluable knowlegde (and sharing) of Finnish mythology. Without her, this story would not exist. Thank you!! *hugs*  
> Other thanks goes to my beta and all the lovely people who listened patiently to my whining and complaining while I wrote this. Thanks all of you!! *hugs* As fun as it was and as challenging to myself, this story was sometimes nearly as stubborn as Ensi herself. We have now *history* together. 
> 
> I have chosen the Y40-setting because it gives a lot of freedom to storytelling and worldbuilding. I think, for example, that in the beginning people did not know about the fundamental differences between Icelandic (chosen by the gods) and Finnish (hereditary) magic.  
> Also, the way I portray Iceland here might seem harsh, but firstly, the history here is told through the eyes of people involunatrily stranded on Iceland and secondly, we have seen enough in canon that I think myself justified in the depiction here.

**Saimaa**

 

Fog lay like a heavy blanket over Lake Saimaa. What little could be seen of the lake was in itself heavy and grey and sluggishly moving about in ripples that looked more like dents in the leaden surface-water than actual movement of the element. An ill wind had blown the days before, uprooting trees, bending and breaking those that weren't but it had itself broken down this night, ceasing its ferocious howl to make way for a change of weather and an eerie, breathless silence. Neither water-fowl nor forest creature made a sound. The lake itself, it seemed, strained to stay hidden under its shroud of mist.

Because there was pollution in the water.

Because on a group of boulders cutting through the surface like the stumps of teeth a beast had made its lair.

Little swirls appeared in the still air and the fog was parted by the hide-spanned prow of a canoe. A woman was seated at the end of it, her hands soundlessly paddling, her stern brow pulled down over an icy stare. Around her the fog closed in with shifting walls but she knew where she was going. Like a disturbance, like something raking rusty nails over her soul, she felt the beast and knew where it was hiding.

A trail of expanding rings was created in her wake when she hoisted the paddle out of the water and laid it carefully down in the canoe. Her sinewy hands shifted to her rifle on her back and gripped it tightly. Her boat moved on. Friction should have brought the vessel to a standstill quite soon, yet it moved swiftly over the water as if someone was _willing_ it along.

The woman stood up.

Presently the canoe slowed down and bumped its prow softly against a rock.

She spotted her prey.

With one giant leap she catapulted herself onto the slimy rock. The beast had felt her, it's ungainly body lurching around, the blind, worm-infested eyes searching for the source of the disturbance, its twisted mind wavering between fight and flight. It must not escape her. As awkward and gross it was on land, it was elegant and deathly swift under water. She brought her rifle down and pulled the trigger. It _did not_ escape her.

She took a moment to catch her breath and listened out onto the lake. The explosion of her shot had been swallowed by the fog almost instantly and the rest of the lake was silent still but the atmosphere had lost its air of breathless anticipation.

Had she been another woman, the Huntress would have smiled thinly at a job well done. But she wasn't and so she didn't. Instead she slung her rifle on her back and returned her attention to the carcass. Considering what to do for a moment, she knelt down next to it in the end and skinned it. Even with leaving out the oh so many limbs and fins and, of course, the head, the pelt she retrieved was sizeable. It would sell well at the market, helping to provide her family with some much needed goods they could not fabricate themselves.

Halting again after stowing away pelt and knife, Ensi stood tall and looked over the lake. Opening her hands in supplication she spoke softly. A rhyme and rhythm was to her words that made them nearly a song and although her voice was rusty, as if she had not spoken for days, it carried the simple beauty of a heartfelt prayer.

_Thank you for your guidance and protection. Lady of the Lake, please accept this in gratitude and let the clean spirit be reborn into your green halls._

She knelt down again and pushed the beast's carcass into the lake.

Without so much as a glance backwards, she boarded her canoe and set off homewards. Mist hung still over the lake, but it was moving now, stirred about by invisible fingers and here and there a smidgen of colour broke through the white. Soon after a swan called from the reeds.

 

~*~

 

Arndis' arms still hurt even thought she had stopped clinging to the railings half an hour ago.

 _Who would have thought that one could get real storms like this in the Baltic Sea?_ , she wondered, amazed and still a bit breathless. It looked so small on the maps, surrounded and closed in by landmasses on all sides. The water, when spraying up onto the deck of the still seaworthy, but nevertheless _old_ vessel, had tasted every ounce as brackish as she had imagined after reading about how little water of the Baltic Sea was exchanged with the ocean.

She was dripping wet. She knew, she should go into the cabin and change into another set of clothes before she caught her death of cold. She did not want to, though. Her colleagues were inside, poring over outdated atlases and crumbly dictionaries, trying to cram as much information into their stuffy heads as possible and working out long lists of phrases and words, which when spoken from their unyielding throats sounded so horrible that she'd rather crawl into her skin and die than being present when her colleagues tried to speak them to an actual Finn.

She made a face and perfunctorily berated herself for being unfair to her fellow Skalds. Just because she herself could not see the merit of knowledge in its own right did not mean others could not enjoy it. Their constant theorizing, however, their incessant comparing of notes and remarks and theories though was enough to drive anyone mad, and not just the one Finnish-speaking Skald who – she hung her head and gritted her teeth and faced the truth once more in the hope that the sting would dull eventually – the one Finnish-speaking Skald who loathed being what she was because she was _not_ a Seiðkona and would never be.

She shifted around on the crate that served as her seat as she heard a door slam shut behind her and found one of her work-mates carefully picking his way towards her. She had not bothered to learn his name, as their party would split up anyway once they arrived at their destination.

“Móri wants to speak to you”, he said in lieu of a greeting.

She nodded and stood up, lunging for the rails as her head span and her stomach heaved.

 _Guess, half an hour was not enough time to calm down_ , she thought wryly, but steeled herself and followed Móri's messenger inside.

As soon as the door had closed behind her and she had stepped down the narrow ladder into the bowels of the ship she remembered the _other_ reason why she had preferred spending the day outside even if it meant sitting through a storm. She tried to swallow through a suddenly dry throat but the churning feeling in her stomach, the tightness behind her heart would not go away. She had never liked enclosed spaces but this vessel was the worst she had ever experienced, maybe because she thought she felt things moving under it, deep in the water.

Which could only be a trick of her senses.

Móri looked every bit as exasperated as he had the last time she had seen him when he glanced up from his notes. He gestured her to his side and without much ceremony slapped a thin folder against her chest.

“Would have been nice if you'd joined us for the briefing”, he muttered angrily. “Better read these files tonight, so that you don't embarrass yourself on your assignment”, he ordered and had returned to his books before she could utter even a perfunctory word of thanks.

 

Later, when the ship had been moored and shut-down for the night, Arndis lay on her cot and leafed through her mission objectives. It was no secret to her superiors that her enthusiasm for academic work was lukewarm at best and that her main reason for volunteering to this six-months-mission was to get away from her dreary work in the office, so they had made do by assigning her the job of accompanying a local Scout on his rounds and gather as much information as possible about the Finnish variants of Rash-victims.

She suspected another, darker reason for this assignment as well: Arndis was an Icelander by birth, but not by heritage – and that made her doubly expendable in the eyes of some individuals, who might think that the most dangerous assignment should go to the least valuable member of the expedition. Granted, only the barest minimum of the populace outright spoke that way, but if Iceland's isolation policy over the three and a half decades after the Rash proved anything, then a fear of the Unknown Outsider. And Arndis' parents had been _nothing but_ outsiders from the start: Erasmus-students who's original plan had been to stay in Iceland only for a year. Later, when the borders were closed, they were a driving force behind students' protests to lift the ban on travelling and let refugees in and other people out. And when the Rash had run its course, finally, they had fervently fought to be let out of the country in search for surviving family members and to give aid wherever it was needed.

But aid had been needed in Iceland as well – the economy had broken down, lack of arable land and thus famine, combined with a shortage of medical and industrial supplies had led to a decline in the general populace by one third of what it had been before. Bitter voices had said, behind hands, that the government used the isolation as much for keeping the infected out as it was restricting the movements of their own people. Words like Indentured Labourers had been whispered, and Forced Relocation, and, worst, Mercy Killings and Death by Neglect. The words were never spoken aloud, but they had fallen into the ground, seeped into the water, blown up into the air. Their mere existence had poisoned the very land that could have been her parents' new home.

Arndis had been born thirteen years after the Rash, at a time when her parents had given up all hope to ever see Finland again. She was a child of resignation.

 

~*~

 

When the third potential buyer that day had walked away from her wares, Ensi started to get annoyed. When it happened a fourth and a fifth time she was ready to pack her stuff, board her skiff and curse the stingy bastards to Tuonela. There would be another market day in two weeks, further up north of the lake, and closer to winter and her furs and pelts would look more desirable then. And her prices more reasonable.

Still, the day was far from over and she could only loose if she went home too early, so she started to while away her time in observation of the other people around her. Most of them she knew, had grown up with and seen them around for years and years. The new people that trickled in once in a while from outlying regions were few and far between. They brought news, though, of other safe places, of reinvented primitive technology or retained Old World knowledge. Together they were helping to stitch a living together out of the ruins of the old world. Every day anew, for forty years.

“Do you have beaver?”

Ensi looked up at the asker and shook her head. “What you see is what I got”, she answered curtly. A look of confusion stole over the other woman's face and Ensi could barely suppress an annoyed sigh. “Beaver's rare. Haven't caught one in months.” And if she hadn't, no one else had. “But I've got rabbit, muskrat, deer.”

“I need something waterproof.”

“Heron or cormorant – just keep the feathers greased.”

She felt the mounting confusion of the other more than she saw it and waited. Finally the woman went away, shaking her head as she walked down the long pier in search of other hunters.

The long pier was actually a conglomerate of several piers, long and short, intersecting and crossing each other, creating a place for meetings and markets and a mooring point for all people who visited Saimaa. It was a good way off the shore and even further away from the small harbour, which sheltered the very few seaworthy ships the Finns still possessed. The harbour itself was one of the busiest places in Saimaa all year round and if Ensi had stood up and looked over at the southern shore, she could have seen dozens of shipwrights at work amidst piles of wood, sawdust and tar. Because everything on Saimaa was about moving around in boats. A step on land could kill you now or together with your village four weeks later. It was better to stay afloat.

The harbour, and its accompanying small garrison, also guarded the entrance to the old Saimaa Canal, the only reasonably safe passage down to the Baltic Sea. Until very recently, though, the canal had nearly been forgotten – fish was found aplenty in the Lake itself and the sea held only unknown horrors. So, as long as the water-gates were properly maintained and the old locks kept in check (and also closed) people tended to forget the waterway. But a few years ago ships had started to sail up from the south. First, a Norwegian ship, heralded by radio from Bornholm, then Danes as well and even, once, the Swedes. It told a lot about just how isolated and forgotten the Finns of Saimaa had felt back then when even _Swedes_ had been welcomed with open arms.

Suddenly the world had become larger again and languages and items, both with unfamiliar patterns, started to flow through the market places and the adventurous youths, instead of turning their minds to the next island, were dreaming instead of outlandish places like Rønne, Mora and Aurland.

And now there had been rumours that the Icelanders were sending an envoy over to trade their technology for timber and wood. Ensi was not sure what to think of this – Old World technology in exchange for something that grew like weeds everywhere? Maybe Iceland was a barren wasteland of volcanic ashes and thundering streams, but did they really need _her_ forests to sate their appetite for wood?

“Do you have Beaver? I need something waterproof.”

What was it with these people and beaver today? “No”, she snapped. And tried to look around the stocky man in front of her boat. There seemed to be movement on the water, south of the harbour where the big wooden gates closed off the entrance to the canal. “I have heron, cormorant, rabbit, deer and muskrat”, she said briskly and pointed to the respective piles. “I also have _saimaannorppa_ , if you want to spend a fortune.”

“What?! But I thought they are extinct!”

“Beasts aren't.”

The man took an involuntary step backwards, as if the pelt could rear up and attack him, and turned on his heels. Ensi lifted an eyebrow and watched him hurry down the wooden planks, slipping once or twice on gull-shit and other remnants of human or animal origin, before she turned her attention back south. In the short time she had been distracted the gates had opened and a smaller shadow could be seen behind them – a ship was approaching.

Someone else was approaching as well, her senses told her, and she shifted her attention back to the people around her. A small gaggle of people walked down the pier, greeting people left and right but not pausing to peruse the merchandise until they came to stop in front of Ensi's wares. She eyed them warily.

The man in the forefront of the half dozen swallowed and cleared his throat. Ensi knew him of old: He had been part of a family living near them when she grew up. They had occasionally met on the lake when fishing and he had once lent her his fishing tackle when her fishing rod was broken by an enormous salmon. Things between them had grown awkward when he confessed his love to her when they were teenagers. Still, when he ran for the office of Mayor she had given him her vote, because, apart from his one-time silliness, he was a sensible man.

Now, his wife on the other hand …

“ _Jumalauta_!”, the woman standing next to him burst out. Just like Ensi herself she was clad in simple,  hard-wearing boots, jacket and trousers. A rifle on her back and a large hunting-knife at her side told everyone of her profession as huntress. The short fur-cape around her shoulders, held together with a carved wolf's head, signalled her position as head of Saimaa's hunter-division. The dark glow in her eyes, though, pinned her down as furious. “She's not going to bite you, Eikko!”

“We'll see”, Ensi said not quite under her breath. “What do you want?”

“I want you to –“

“We need you to –”

The two town-officials looked at each other for a moment before Reni motioned her husband to continue speaking to Ensi. It was probably for the best.

“We need your help with an official matter. A boat full of Icelanders is coming up the canal, with Skalds, and we agreed to support their research.”

“That boat, you mean?”, Ensi asked and pointed outwards. The ship had grown considerably in size during the last minutes. It was fast and its design looked utterly foreign.

“ _Hitto!_ They're early” , cursed Reni and spun around. “With me!” She jogged away to the harbour, followed by most of the bystanders.

Eikko on the other hand let off a barrage of words, trying to outrun the arriving ship with his words, so that he could also be on the pier in time to greet his guests. “One part of the research is about Rash-beasts and Trolls and we need a hunter to show one of the Skalds around and keep them safe and originally Riita Järvinen was to do the job but she –“

“Is dead.”

They spared a few seconds of silence for the former chief of the hunter-division. Her death, only a few weeks past, had left a gaping hole in the community.

“So you want me to babysit this Skald?”

She saw Eikko wince at her choice of words but he was wise enough not to object to them. And, in all honesty, she was right – an Icelander, however bodily fit or skilled with a rifle, was still nothing more than a pampered child compared to even the worst hunter Saimaa could bring up. The research-mission would be little more than trying to prevent said Skald from accidentally killing himself while traipsing after the tiniest Rash-beasts they could find.

Ensi felt his imploring gaze on her as she leaned back in her boat and threw one leg over the other, making it rock slightly. She sighed.

“A favour for a favour”, she said.

 

~*~

 

Arndis was aghast.

She had barely left her solitary outlook on the boat's prow ever since they had started up this morning, eager to see her parents' homeland. The Saimaa Canal with its wide and calm body of water had been fascinating enough so far for someone who only knew the capricious streams in Iceland and the unforeseeable ways they ploughed their way across the landscape. But then there were the trees. _The Trees!_

The haggard, malnourished and wind-tousled things that they called tree in Iceland couldn't just compete. It felt like an insult in her mind to even compare them to the overwhelming presence the woods had here. It was astonishing to look into the dense underbrush on either side of the canal and just see trunks seemingly going on forever, instead of having a pale shimmer shine through at the end of the 20-metre-copses she had hitherto called 'wood'.

“Don't you have enough of all that fresh air, by now?”

Arndis jerked out of her reverie and spun around, seeing the same young Skald who had fetched her last night, approach her again with steaming tin-mugs in his hands.

“One has to say, though, the view here is infinitely better than downstairs.” He offered her one cup with a smirk and she accepted it, frowning slightly about the double meaning in his words and decided to go for the obvious.

“You don't see woods like that in Iceland.”

He shrugged dismissively. “Maybe in a few hundred years.”

Arndis felt a stab of annoyance at this but covered it by bringing her mug up to her mouth and blowing on it. It was mint-tea, though she could see a few flecks of citrus-peel floating in it as well.

She was spared the ordeal of having to think up polite conversation as he suddenly leaned over the side of the boat. “Is that duck-weed down there?”, he muttered to himself. “Didn't think it grew here.” When he pulled a small notebook out of his jacket and began jotting down notes, she took a few steps to the side and continued to stare ahead, her hands wrapped around the mug in an attempt to keep them still.

Soon the trees on either side of the canal looked thinner, more fragile and younger as they continued their journey north – north-west now, Arndis corrected herself, after a look at her shadow and her clock – and she could see glimpses of concrete through the thickets. A city had once been here, she realized after a moment, and a cold shudder ran down her back. Were the corpses still there? Had they rotted away into nothingness? Or had cleansing commandos been through here and buried them? Her questions seemed to be answered when the trees on the left-sided shore of the canal vanished completely and laid bare an expanse of black and burned earth, dotted with the twisted, half-melted steel-skeletons of old world buildings.

It was _some_ sort of burial, at least, she thought.

“Great Gate ahoy!”, sounded suddenly from behind and Arndis' attention was irresistibly to what lay ahead of her.

Soon they would arrive in Saimaa, she thought excited. For the first time in her life she would meet native Finns, hear her language spoken from other tongues than those of her family. Maybe she would even meet relatives, although the chances of that actually happening was nearly non-existent, she knew.

 _But a woman can dream, can she not?_ , she thought as around her several others of her colleagues were surfacing to witness the last past of their journey.

The gate closing off the canal from the lake was as impressive and astounding as any ten metre high gate with a barbed wire crown could hope to be and the gate-guards, as far as she could make out, had the appropriate scowls befitting people in their position firmly in place. One of them called down in a rough-and-ready-sounding Swedish and was answered in the same fashion. He called again and, again, the group's official interpreter answered for them. Then the guard turned to the side and bellowed down the rampart on which he was standing and Arndis' ears were graced by the first spoken words of Finnish since she had left her parents' place last midsummer.

“ _Hannu!!_ Will you open the bloody gate already or are you sleeping on the job again?”

 

 _Just as well, I wasn't drinking anything. Might have choked for real, otherwise_ , Arndis thought when her coughing fit had finally stopped. She absent-mindedly waved off a cautious tap on the back from one of her team mates, cleared her throat again and pushed her way back to the front of the ship in time to see the gate swing open and their ship taking up steam again to drive through.

The view which presented itself behind the gate was …

“Kinda underwhelming”, whispered one woman to her right to her friend and Arndis felt a stab of guilty annoyance flash through her at this. What did she expect? A thriving city full of fair-haired, long-limbed creatures of beauty, sailing across a crystal-clear lake on boats made of shining white wood, speaking in melodic voices and singing ancient rhymes while wisdom shone out of their clear grey eyes?

Instead what she saw was a rough-and-ready conglomerate of splintery wooden planks, haphazardly kitted together and thronged by Wildlings garbed in furs and faded-coloured rags. The lake's shores to both sides had been walled off by wood-and-clay earthworks, which looked as if a giant child had tried to build a wall by dribbling wet sand through its fingers, and where the wall did not obstruct her view Arndis could see the black and desolate remains of the city that once stood here.

She wanted to kick something.

“Oh look, the tribe's chieftain comes to greet us”, the woman to her right said not quite under her breath to a friend and pointed to the shore where, on a tiny quay, a small throng of people had assembled. Furs and guns were much in evidence among this group, along with leather, iron and, somehow, life chickens running about.

“Oh Gods, do you think they have civilised foodstuffs here or will we have to fend for ourselves?”, the other woman quavered and grew pale when she caught the dark glare Arndis was giving her.

Without any desire to spend even a second longer in the presence of any Icelander, Arndis stormed down the stairs to the cabin and grabbed her stuff. The sooner she got off this boat, the sooner she could meet a real Finn, the better she would feel. And even if she had to fend for herself in the wilderness of Lake Saimaa … well, she was furious enough right now to wring a dozen necks.

 


	2. Maahinen

**Maahinen**

 

Ensi had to give that to the girl: She had stamina. When told that she had to have her share of the sailing she had looked for a moment as if she wanted to protest, but the hesitation only went on as long as it took to cast one look back to her comrades. There was no love lost there, Ensi had noticed when Arndis had thrown in her knapsack and climbed into the skiff without so much as a goodbye to the other Icelanders. Now, after half an hour of handling the wet ropes and canvas of the sail the girl was bright-red in the face and from the occasional wince Ensi assumed that her hands inside her gloves were covered in blisters by now.

“You can take a rest”, she said loud enough to drown out the snapping sail and noticed the slight slump in Arndis' shoulders before the carefully balanced to the prow and sat down between the bundles there.

“Are we there yet?”, she called and turned around to look at the small island ahead.

It took Ensi a moment to decipher the strange dialect.

“No”, she said resolutely. The thought of explaining their travel-plans further occurred to her but Ensi had never been a woman of many words, and on the lake she preferred to be silent. That was apparently not the case for the Icelander, since she leaned backwards a bit and when no explanation came forward she called: “Where are we going? Does the journey take long?”

Ensi threw her a dark look and directed her little skiff towards a small birch bedecked island a few hundred metres ahead. ' _We're going home_ ' was so obvious an answer that Ensi considered not answering at all but then again the girl had already shown that she was unable to understand silent discouragement and was likely to continue to nag.

“We're going to my home, of course, and the journey will be all the longer for every noise you make that attracts the attention of the infected”, she said in quiet, clipped tones and had the grim satisfaction of seeing Arndis flinch.

“What?! I thought Saimaa was _safe_?”

Ensi threw her a withering look and her guest thankfully understood the hint. They drove onwards for another few minutes before their bottom grazed over loose gravel. Ensi was in the shallow water in an instant, rifle at the ready, but nothing moved. She gave Arndis a wink with her hand and an answering splash told her that the girl had jumped off the boat, too. They dragged it on the shore but left the load, apart from an empty sack Ensi stuffed into the pocket of her outer layer jacket, and wandered up the stony shore up to the thin fringe of birches which clung to the rocky soil between the lake and the craggy cliffs that made up the main part of the island.

“Where are we going?”, Arndis asked after just a few steps.

“Not far”, came Ensi's curt reply. Was that girl unable to stop asking the most inane questions? Well, she would see what stuff the Icelander was made of when this little excursion was over.

 

~*~

 

It was not going well.

As little experience Arndis had with her countrymen and -women she was still able to tell that this Ensi Hotakainen was going to be a tough nut to crack. If she just knew where to start! Ensi seemed to be an interesting person, Arndis had decided just from the start, but she also emanated an aura of cutting directness and cold decisiveness that inspired awe as well as caution. What life must she have lived if she had been shaped to become like this? Only one way to find out, Arndis decided. Trying to ignore the chafing of her wet boots against her skin, she hurried up after the huntress.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far.”

Arndis rolled her eyes and was thankful that the other woman could not see her do so. Of course they would not go far! This island was tiny! Ensi surely did not live here – at least not permanently – otherwise it would have been illogical to leave their freight back in the boat. The real questions were therefore: What were they doing here? And why were they doing it now?

The skald sighed inaudible. Well, sometimes you just had to try a few times and spell things out for people … “What are we doing here?”

The huntress just ignored her and walked on, weaving her way through the birch-thickets without so much as disturbing a branch. The only sound they heard were their footfalls on dead leaves and dry grass. There was a darker shape ahead. Some rock slide that seemed to have happened some time ago, if the finger thick saplings sticking up from between the rocks were any indication. Her guide barely glanced at the wall of rock before them and just started to walk off to her left side, leaving it up to Arndis whether to follow her or not.

She did of course, even though she toyed with the thought of just returning to their boat, but she was a guest here, Arndis reminded herself, and as such she was dependant on that stern woman's hospitality. But try as she might, she could not find an answer to why their relationship should have gone off to such a bad start. As she was wondering about how to improve this situation, and was stomping along after Ensi, she became aware of a nudging feeling at the back of her head. Her hand shot up and ruffled through her short locks, finding nothing stuck there, but the feeling persisted. She turned around in her tracks but there was nothing behind or above her as well that might have induced that feeling. It still was there, though, now growing into the physical sensation of someone running a thin twig through her hair and down her spine.

“En-- oof!” She had collided with the older woman who had stopped in her path. She made a hasty step backwards to keep her balance and only then cast a look forward. Ensi had stopped in front of an outcrop of the rock slide. Some dry and half-buried beams indicated that once a shelter must have stood here, but nothing in the area pointed to a more recent inhabitation. Ensi sighed impatiently and pointed Arndis' gaze two metres ahead to a lump of … something. She had never seen anything like it. She had never _imagined_ anything like it! Arndis could not even say if it was of human or animal origin, but she was very glad that it was definitely dead. Anything with half a dozen bullet-wounds in its head and torso should be dead.

“What is this?”, she asked through a shudder of revulsion and took some carefully measured steps back. The spidery thin fingers of the thing were gnarled and buried deep into the mulch, but still Arndis couldn't shake the feeling that they would twitch any second.

“Maahinen”, was Ensi's short answer. She prodded the thing with the barrel of her rifle, and then turned it over for a better view of its front side. Arndis hurried to look away before she could lose her breakfast but the grotesque visage with its rows and rows of teeth and the dark, masticated and leathery skin stretching over knife sharp bones kept dancing in front of her mind's eye.

“Maahinen?”, she asked through a constricted throat. _Get a grip on yourself, girl!_ , she berated herself for her unprofessional reaction. Not once in her entire life had she felt such revulsion at anything. And she knew, with every last fibre of her being she just _knew_ , that if she caught so much as a whiff of decay from that thing she would retch out her guts right in front of that harsh huntress with the judging glare.

 

~*~

 

Ensi stood and watched the girl trying to keep a grip on herself. She noted with interest that the Icelander had turned a faint green around her nose while the rest of her face was as white as fresh milk while she sucked down air in huge, shuddering gasps.

“A Maahinen is a form of troll”, she said at last. “It hides in crags, hollow trees, under rocks … basically anywhere where its body fits and it has a good vantage point for seizing possible prey.”

Her impassive lecturing seemed to reach the girl and snap her out of her uneasiness. Still pale she wiped her hands across her face and cautiously turned her eyes back to the dead troll.

“So it was a human once?” Some heavy gulps followed this short question. Revulsion and horror were still prominent on the skald's face but curiosity was edging into the tone of her voice.

“Most likely a child. They're small and fragile, and even the larger ones prefer to attack in a pack.”

“A child …!”

“Do you think the Rash made an exemption for children?”, Ensi snapped. Half-forgotten memories stirred in the bottom of her mind but she mercilessly quenched them. Instead she concentrated on the girl's reddened cheeks as her reprimand seemed to have struck a chord of pride in the Icelander.

“It is one thing to know and another thing to see”, the girl said tetchily and added: “I would have liked to take a picture of this, but I left my camera in the boat since I didn't know you were going to show me something like this.”

“It's your job to record the Finnish trolls, so it is your job as well to remember to carry that camera with you”, Ensi answered matter-of-factly and watched the red darken on the girl's face.

“All right”, she snapped. “I didn't think I would need to lug a kilogram of valuable and complicated technology around with me at all times, but obviously I was in error. Just let me fetch it now and leave this unpleasant place as soon as possible.”

Once again, it took Ensi a moment to decipher what the young woman had hissed in her thick accent but her turning on the spot and stalking back the way they had come was unmistakeable. With two jumps Ensi was next to her and restrained her with one hand on her shoulder. When the other woman jerked away from her touch the huntress stepped into her path and casually lifted her rifle.

“No one is going alone in the wild and especially not along a path they have walked down already!”, she snapped under her breath. “Didn't they teach you _anything_?”

“Why should they?!”, hissed the skald, thankfully not raising her voice as Ensi feared she would do. “We don't have horrors like _that_ –”, she thrust her hand back to the dead Maahinen, “– running around!”

“Thanks to you cowering behind closed borders while others fought this –”, an equally vicious stab back with a hand, “– and died by the thousands!”

“I'm a Finn!”, the girl yelled. “My parents are Finns, just like you, and they were victims of Iceland's isolation policy thems–”

“ _Isolation policy?!_ ”, Ensi hissed, suddenly enraged. “Is that what they called it when they abandoned us?”

“Letting the Rash in to Iceland would have changed nothing!”

“This is not about the Rash”, snarled Ensi with increasing volume. “The Rash was done after a few months! This is about the forty years after when we had to crawl around in dust and decay, raking together every smidgen of knowledge while you sat on your damned island with guns and food and medicine while we _starved and lost our kin to cold and gangrene!_ ”

 _Vittu!_ , Ensi cursed herself in silence. She had not meant to become upset and she tried her best to bite back the insults that were lining up on the back of her tongue. But she had been so angry for so long and finally here was someone who could take the blame. What did this Icelander think waltzing into Finland forty years too late for the world, and twenty-five years too late for her father, coming to pluck away the fruits of decades of hard labour and danger?!

Her parents had told her about the Old World – of the United Nations, of the European Union, of the Nordic Council, of solemn vows sworn to protect and support each other, never to raise arms against each other again and to help one another in need.

And Iceland had broken faith with everyone. Why should she welcome one of them into _her_ home, into _her_ land?

“Why did you offer to take me in, then, if you hate Icelanders that much?”, the girl asked with blazing eyes. Her voice was flat with anger. “Just to have a go at me?”

“No”, Ensi said curtly. “I was asked.”

“You could have declined!”

“I didn't.”

“ _Why?!”_

 

~*~

 

There was no echo, yet Arndis felt her cry reverberate through the light wood and air until it came back to her ears and shuddered through her body. This was going so wrong. So, so terribly wrong! She had wanted nothing more than to see Finland, to be with her people finally, and yet this woman rejected her again and again. It was enough to make her scream in frustration! It was enough to make her cry. But she would rather die than let the other see her being weak, so she wrapped herself in her anger and fixed Ensi with as forward a stare as she could muster.

The barely visible movements of clenched muscles in the older woman's jaw were not a reassuring sight but when she finally opened her mouth the only word to come out of it was “Come.” before she, once again, stalked off without waiting for Arndis to follow. The Skald pondered to make a point in staying where she was, or even returning to the boat, but after a mere few seconds the uneasiness she had felt earlier crept over her again. Once again, she lifted her hand to ruffle through her hair and yelled as her fingers brushed against something sickly thin. With one jump she was away and after Ensi, but one hasty look over her shoulder showed her a small, elongated shadow scurrying into the gloom between a nearby thicket. Whimpering, she ripped her jacket off, turned it inside out and scrunched it into a ball.

Out of breath and shivering she reached the Finnish huntress. Ensi had not walked far. In fact, she had knelt down next to the dead Maahinen and was in the process of hoisting it onto her back. Arndis had time enough to notice that the small sack Ensi had brought with her was now on the creature's head before her knees gave out under her and she collapsed to the ground. Sweat pearled into existence all over her body, its presence sending waves of cold through her. Her limbs were heavy as lead when she tried to lift an arm to wipe away the moisture on her upper lip but she let it fall back into her lap without letting it come near her face. Deep breaths. She had to take deep breaths to calm herself. She whimpered again. Deep breaths could mean the dead of her!

Her vision turned black at the sides.

“What is it?” Ensi's not unkind words pulled her back. A shadow moved to her side and she flinched away, not recognising the Finn as she knelt down next to her.

“Do you need to throw up?” The woman's voice was a mixture of exasperation and concern and made Arndis laugh. On a deep down level this was hilarious.

“We –“ She gulped air down. It was either that or suffocate. “We should leave. Back there. Trolls.”

With one swift movement the huntress was on her feet again, her rifle already cocked when the dead Maahinen thudded to the ground.

“How big was it? Did you get a proper look?”

“No”, said Arndis shakily. “It was gone as soon as my finger brushed it.”

“You touched it?!”

“ _It was on my head!_ ”, the Skald shrieked.

Next to her, the Finn grew very still before she knelt down next to Arndis again. Maybe it occurred to her now that she should have asked some very important questions when that haggard looking man had introduced them to each other on the pier. She asked one now.

“Are you immune?”

“No”, Arndis whispered through a constricting throat.

 

~*~

 

The silence that followed was as potent as any word of them had been so far.

_Why on earth didn't you tell me this? What harebrained scheme made you come to Finland?! Why aren't you wearing a mask?! What were you thinking standing here and gawking at a dead troll without giving me so much as a warning!?,_ were the things that immediately went through Ensi's brain but she wasted no time in speaking them. The mistake was hers. _She_ was the hunter, _she_ was the host, _she was responsible!_

Without asking for permission she grabbed the Icelander's head and, turning it this way and that, inspected it for any kind of wound or scratch, even a slightly red patch of skin. When she could not find any sign of broken skin on the skald's head Ensi pulled the girl's robe's collar down to her shoulder blades and frantically repeated the search. The same went with her hands when she had pulled off the gloves with extra care. Only when Ensi had gone over both areas again did she sit back on her heels and gave the shivering girl an exasperated look.

“Nothing”, she said and the Icelander sagged in relief. “What were you thinking??”, Ensi burst out at last. “You came here to record trolls and beasts! Did it ever occur to you that you might die? Or worse??”

Arndis sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Would've been worth it”, she said under her breath.

An invisible fist knocked the air out of Ensi's lungs and left her mouth gaping. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry. Here was a girl who had left her safe haven of a rash-free land of plenty to chase a dream of Finland. Ensi wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Instead she stood up and gathered the girl's jacket and gloves.

“We better go.”

 

~*~

 

“What's with the troll”, Arndis gasped as she tried to keep up with Ensi. The shock was still seated deep inside her and made her breathless.

“Not important any more”, Ensi said as curtly as she had ever known her. But she still remembered the shocked silence and the heavily veiled look of sympathy she had seen in the elder woman's eyes when they set off.

After a short veer to their left and after weaving through thin birch twigs that caught on her tunic and hair and made her whimper under her breath, they had once again stood on the gravel-strewn beach and were now jogging along the shore to their boat. It was still where they had left it, now with the additional company of a small flock of gulls balancing on mast and prow, picking at the various bundles Ensi had stored in the hull.

“Get off there!”, they yelled in unison, only seconds after the first birds had started to vacate their vessel and then they were at the boat. Arndis jumped inside it with fear-fuelled agility and dove for her backpack while Ensi pushed the boat off the sand before climbing back in after her. A sigh of relief went through Arndis when she found her mask and put it on. The straps were too tight around her head, one reason why she loathed having to wear the thing, but right now she felt like it was the only safe haven in the world.

When she looked up at Ensi she saw that the woman had busied herself with sail and mast and was now sitting at the back, rudder in one hand and her rifle next to the other. The look she gave Arndis when her gazes met was indecipherable, still the skald felt safe enough to gave her a shaky smile. Ensi lifted an eyebrow and let her gaze sweep over the lake and back to the island before looking at Arndis again.

“We're going straight to my home now”, she said in a low voice. “I promise you to answer all your questions when we are there – until then I want you to hold your tongue. Can you do this?”

Arndis nodded.

“And try to calm yourself. Vellamo despises intense emotions but she will protect us if we stay calm.”

 _Who is Vellamo?_ , Arndis wanted to ask but remembered in time to bite her tongue. She pulled her backpack nearer to her instead, took out another jacket, put it on and scribbled the question into her notebook. Over the next hours quite a lot of other questions joined the first one but this one was the only question, when she asked them later, that made Ensi smile.

They had been at Ensi's place for a while then, Arndis being pleasantly surprised to find the Finn's abode to be a snug cottage near a walled-in village which inhabitants, it turned out, were almost all related to one another. Ensi's house stood near the lake shore and at the foot of a small cliff, away from most other houses but still within shouting range, and next to a sauna. A real sauna! It took every ounce of willpower Arndis possessed not to beg to have a go at it before she did anything else.

After she had been decontaminated and shown her cot in Ensi's tiny living room and had made the rounds of introduction, they were seated in Ensi's mother Aino's warm and smoky kitchen, Arndis with a cup of tea in her hands and Ensi with two little boys balancing on her knees. She had a steaming cup of tea as well next to her but her attention was divided between the question-page in her hand and pulling her head out of the way whenever one of the boys made a grab for her face.

“Who is Vellamo?”, she muttered under her breath, still with an unbelieving smile. “How can anyone who calls themselves a Finn _not_ know about her?”

“You heard what she told us about how things were in Iceland after the Rash”, Aino said with slight disapproval without looking up from the basket she was weaving with gnarled and rheumy fingers. “Do you think it would have been easy for Arndis' parents to teach her even part of her heritage in that climate, let alone the whole Kalevala?”

“They could have tried”, Ensi answered off-handedly. The harsh “No!” that followed was directed at one of her boys who had reached for the ever-present puukko at her side. Their talk was interrupted when the child started to wail at the reprimand and scrambled for comfort in the arms of his aged grandmother, shortly followed by his twin. Ensi seemed equally relieved and put out by watching this.

“We have always been free”, Aino continued after a few minutes of calming the children down. “Free to move when we still had the _Snow Bird_ and free to do as we pleased when we settled here. Not everyone is so lucky.”

The look that passed between mother and daughter was one of exasperation and understanding and grudging gratitude. It might have had to do, Arndis mused and felt a smirk tug at the corners of her mouth, of one raising children so that the other could roam freely through her realm.

“You're right”, Ensi admitted and turned to Arndis. “Vellamo is a goddess, the Mistress of lakes and lake shores …” She stopped and a displeased frown crossed her face. “Saying it like this is nothing. You have to feel her.” She stopped again, obviously unable to find the right words to describe Vellamo to her. Ensi tried again. “Mielikki is the goddess of Forests and the Hunt, Ukko the god of Thunder, Kuutar is the goddess of the Moon and Päivätär the goddess of the Sun. There are other gods, and spirits, and entities, of course. But we live on _Saimaa_.” Ensi's voice had taken on a level of intensity that made goose-bumps appear along Arndis' spine. “The lake shelters and nourishes us. It is the centre of our lives. It is our home. And out there on the water, _Vellamo is everything._ ”

 


	3. SeiÞkona

**SeiÞkona**

 

When Arndis awoke next morning she found the cabin empty and her breath visibly hanging in the air, so she busied herself with stoking a small fire in the stove before she walked up to Aino's house for breakfast. On the way there she noticed that the skiff they had come in yesterday still lay on the small beach while the canoe next to it had gone.

Eating with Ensi's family was nice and relaxing, Ensi's mother clearly seeking to make up for her daughter's stand-offish behaviour by being extra nice and it didn't take long until Arndis felt welcome here and not so much as a burden any more. But after mid-day, when she had helped the old woman around the house and entertained Ensi's boys for a short while, her feeling of redundancy returned with fervour and soon she found herself walking circles in Ensi's living room. When tired of the small room she went outside again, but still couldn't shake her disappointment with herself.

What had she been thinking? She berated herself. Of course, the matter of her non-immunity was of no importance in Iceland – she was only one in a legion of equally non-immunes – but here it mattered and meant the early end of her mission. What  _had_ she been thinking!

_Nothing_ , she had to admit to herself. Or better: too much. From her parent's tales of their longed-for home and her own disappointment with Iceland in general and her own inability to become a SeiÞkona she had made up an illusion of Finland –  _Suomi_ – and that illusion had now come crashing down around her.

Listless, she kicked a few stones into the shallows near the sauna and sat down against the wood and stone wall of the small building. She remembered meetings with her superiors back in Selfoss, and everyone in them trying to convince her to stay back home or at least back on the boat, where she could translate for the rest of the team – but she would not have it. If people lived in Finland it had to be safe enough, she reasoned. If her translations were needed in the field, how would her colleagues contact her?, she had asked. Sending her, a Finn, would establish connections to the native citizenry way more easily, she had argued. In the end, her superiors did not bring forth any more reasons for her to stay behind but saluted her for taking such a high risk.

Her reasons, of course, had been totally selfish ones. Arndis was perfectly ready to admit this. By now, though, she was also ready to admit that her reasoning had been based on wishful thinking instead of rational facts.

She went back to Aino for supper and in time to put the children into bed. Jukka and Juha were, apart from the scabs along their knees, virtually indistinguishable and both were entirely too lively when they were tucked in on one side of their grandmother's big bed.

“Do you think, she's coming back tonight?”, Arndis asked later in Aino's kitchen while nursing a piece of spongy rye bread and cheese.

The old woman looked out of her small window first. The lake down at the foot of the cliff was covered in ripples where the soft autumn wind stroked along it and a gibbous moon peeked through hazy clouds. “I don't think so”, Aino said at last. “She loves nights like this and will return at dawn at the earliest.”

When Arndis carefully climbed down the winding path to Ensi's hut she idly mused how the inner world of a woman must look like who would leave her children to be brought up by their grandmother in favour of walking the cancerous wilderness at night. She was nearly down at the beach when she noticed a haggard looking man standing near the path, partly hidden in a copse of firs. His face was sunk in, as if he was with a great illness, but his eyes gleamed with intend and purpose as he watched over the empty and silent lake.

“Good evening”, Arndis said as she walked by.

He half-turned his head and nodded once before his attention was drawn back to the water.

Arndis wondered if she should stop and talk to the man, after all, there was nothing going on on the lake, but decided that he might want to be left alone. He hadn't been introduced to her when she had made the rounds around the houses here yesterday evening, so he might be some kind of hermit, she decided.

Wandering away from that silent shadow she decided to take a stroll along the shore before turning in. It really was a beautiful and quiet night and Arndis resented that she had to wear her mask, which prevented her from smelling the crisp night air which she felt prickle on her skin. A few dozen paces away from the hut she noticed the small lights of spirits emerge from under ferns and between the spare reeds on the shore and for once she was gladder to see something familiar than sad at the reminder of her failure to become a Mage. When she reached the hut, she stood outside the door and spoke her evening prayers. The North Star hung clear and bright in the sky, pointing all the way upwards Yggdrasil's trunk so that she knew where to direct her words.

 

“Does she usually stay away this long?”, Arndis asked the next day when they had cleared away the breakfast things and washed up.

“I would not worry too much about Ensi”, Aino answered in a voice that told that she had worried very often and very long about her daughter and had had to give it up someday because it was either that or eat herself alive with anxiety. “She is out there, somewhere, hunting trolls or hunting game or setting traps. Maybe she teaches herself new magic.” A wan smile followed this. “She can fend for herself.”

Aino had taken up residence on a small woven bench made of birch twigs outside her cottage and was officially teaching the boys how to play the kantele but in truth let the mild October sun warm her old bones. Her head rested on the wall behind her and she seemed to be half-asleep but her eyes were twinkling as she kept a look on her surroundings. Arndis sat next to her, her notebook on her knees, and tried to pen down as many details she remembered about the Maahinen. It was not much, she ascertained sadly, after two nights of sleep and a considerable shock into the bargain. Her drawing of it, though, was the accurate stuff of nightmares so, naturally, it held a great fascination for Juha and Jukka.

“Look!”, one of the two yelled and pushed a torn piece of paper from her notebook under her hands. Arndis glanced down and saw some squiggly lines which might have been an attempt to copy out her drawing of the troll.

“Nicely done”, she said non-committally and reached for a bowl of peas waiting to be de-shelled for tomorrow's soup.

“Look! Here!”, the child insisted and the Skald looked again. This time one tiny finger pointed to a little sign next to the squiggle-troll. Unlike the other drawing this sign was the quite accurately drawn picture of a four-pointed star made up of five squares. “Ha … Han …”

“Hannunvaakuna”, Aino chimed in and patted the child on the head. The other one, still engrossed in his own drawings of the symbol, got a pat on the head as well. “And what is it used for?”, the old woman asked in a schoolmaster's voice.

“Protection!”, came the instant answer. Aino smiled pleased at her grandsons.

 _So there is magic here as well_ , Arndis thought. Aloud she said: “Let me show you some Icelandic protection runes!”

As she drew the familiar stave, however, just as always, she felt nothing.

 

There was fish-soup for dinner later that day.

As Arndis was laying the table she heard Aino give a tin filled with the froth from the soup to Jukka and tell him to pour it into the lake.

“Remember not to look back when you return”, she told him sternly.

 

The thin and withdrawn looking man was back, staring out onto the lake, when she walked down to the shore that evening. He did not react to her greeting and seemed not even be aware of the small flock of spirits circling his head. He seemed content enough though, so Arndis left him alone.

 _I should ask Aino about him_ , she said to herself. By the time she had said her evening prayers, though, she had forgotten her intention.

 

On the third day Aino invited her to learn to play the kantele along with her grandsons.

“One pupil more will not matter”, she said with a chuckle and handed the instrument over.

As soon as she had played the first notes, Arndis knew that, even if she never managed to learn a single song, just plucking the strings along to her thoughts would forever fill her with contentment and joy. She listened as the tones vibrated through the air, expanding in circles she could nearly see, felt the warm wood under her hands and was happy. The light, clear tones her fingers drew forth fell into the raging sea of her mind and calmed the storm.

“Thank you”, she said to the woman next to her and wondered why she was crying.

 

When she stepped out of the sauna that evening to cool herself down in the lake, her first look around showed a canoe lying on the beach, next to the skiff.

When she returned into the hot and dark sauna, a womb made of water, wood and fire, she found Ensi sitting on the top-bench, naked, with old and new scar-tissue everywhere Arndis looked and her long silver-blond hair falling limp around her face and shoulders.

“You're back then”, she said and sat herself on the lower bench across from the older woman.

Ensi opened one eye with difficulty. The other one, Arndis saw with slight shock, was swollen shut. Still, the look of annoyance that flickered over the huntress' face was clearly visible, black eye or not. Arndis chuckled.

“Fine”, she said. “I'll shut up.”

When they both lay in the shallows later, drinking in the frosty night air with its promise of winter, stars above and life around them, Arndis could not imagine how this land could be called anything but magical.

It was broken, it was tainted, yet it throbbed with a kind of power she had never felt before. It was perfect to her.

Still steaming, she stood up and walked up the beach and waited for Ensi to stoke the sauna fire a last time and fill up the water bucket once more before they both went into the hut.

“Why did you agree to take me in?”, Arndis asked from her cot in the dark living room a while later.

“It was a favour”, came the short reply from the bedroom a few steps away.

Even though she had been away for nearly four days, without proper food and shelter, Ensi appeared to be as alert and wide awake as if she had just woken from a ten-hour-sleep. Half a minute later, though, her soft snores drifted through the darkness.

 

“What did she mean with 'It was a favour'?” Arndis had just told Aino about her daughter's safe return while she was kneading the dough for the next batch of bread. Baking took place once a week and she was only yet halfway through the small mound of flour they needed for a week's ration of bread. The rye dough was sticky and wet on her skin, squelching between her fingers and fighting back like the living thing it was. She was sure that by now she must have had blotches of it everywhere on her face and hair and even her clothes, although she had taken care not to wipe her hands on them, as she was usually wont to do.

Across the table Aino was cleaning fish. “That's hard to say”, she said. She filleted a cleaned fish and threw the remains into the cat-fodder bucket. Arndis noticed with pity that the old woman's rheumy hands were shaking from the effort of holding the knife and keeping a grip on the slick vendance. Ensi was out on the lake, taking in nets and fish-traps and the other inhabitants of the small island were at their respective tasks as well. Disjointed plucking from the outside told that one of the kids was playing around with the kantele. The sound was counterbalanced by clucking chickens who had their run next to the small kitchen garden. This was peace.

“A lot of things work through favours here on Saimaa”, the old woman explained. “Not everyone can be good at everything, so people trade their skills or products or time with each other.”

Arndis took this in and thought about it while wrestling with the dough. “I think it has something to do with the mission and with the liaison to Iceland”, she opined. “So maybe the one organising it, Esko or Eikki, owes her a favour now?” The dough finally fell from her aching fingers without leaving much residue behind, so she scattered a handful of flour on it, covered the bowl with a clean towel and set it on the shelf above the stove to rise. She absent-mindedly wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving yet another streak of dough on herself, before she reached for the second bowl of flour, mixed it with sourdough and water and began kneading anew.

“His name is Eikko”, Aino remembered after a minute of thought. A sly smile spread over her wrinkled face. “And it was Ensi who owed him a favour.”

“How so?”, Arndis asked with piqued interest. What kind of service could someone as independent as Ensi need?

“Well, it's all rumours, of course, but a few weeks ago the leader of Saimaa's Hunter Division died during a mission. Riita had been an exceptionally good hunter, of course, but in her line of work it is always only a matter of time.” Aino shuffled over to the stove and added a small pile of fish to the pot of water simmering there. “You see”, she continued, “when it was time to chose a successor for Riita's position, people started to suggest that Ensi should take up the job. My girl was never in the military but she is one of the best out here.” Pride swung in Aino's voice as she said it. “So it would have been natural to offer the position to her. But suddenly the whole matter was off the table when Eikko appointed his wife to the job.”

“How is that a favour?”, Arndis exclaimed. “He robbed her of an excellent career-opportunity!”

“Did he now?” Aino chuckled at this as she stirred the pot and began ladling the froth into the tin-can in her hand, as Arndis had seen her do before. “Can you image Ensi holding down a regular job in the military? Taking orders and being responsible for troops?”

Arndis had time to picture this unlikely scenario while Aino called Juha in and handed him the tin with the instruction of pouring it into the lake.

“She _would_ have taken the job if it had been offered to her”, the woman continued when her grandson was gone. “Her sense of duty and, yes, her pride as well, would have made her accept it. But she'd been  miserable. Eikko made the whole problem disappear by preventing _that_ question being asked at all and got criticised for favouritism in the bargain. Poor boy.”

“So she really owed him?”

“Very much so.”

In the privacy of her head Arndis marvelled about the fact that even someone like Ensi, who acted for all the world as if she could do without human company altogether, needed people at her back, to keep her path free of obstacles so that she could unfold her full potential. And she thought back to her parents, still in Iceland, and her colleagues at the office in Selfoss. “Hmm.”

The second batch of dough was ready. She set that one to rise as well and announced to Aino that she was going to tidy herself up a bit. Intercepting one cat as it tried to slink past her to the fish-bucket as she opened the door, she set off at a brisk walk through the tiny village, through the wooden barricades and down the narrow path to the shore.

Wash hands, wash face, brush out hair, change into last set of clean clothes – she pulled a face as she realized she had to have a laundry-day soon – greet the strange man standing near the path and watching over the lake … Only, he was _not_ watching the lake today. His face was contorted into a mask of terrified certainty as he looked at something further down the path, no, at the beach itself.

 _Troll?! Beast?!_ Arndis' hands shot upwards to strap on her mask but even in the movement of putting it on she saw that it was not a Rash-thing the man was looking at but Juha.

“What …” She slowed down unconsciously as she watched the child walk away from the shore where he had emptied the tin-can like his grandmother had ordered him to do. But instead of returning to the path back up into the village afterwards the boy suddenly made a sharp turn and dashed behind the sauna, trying to keep himself hidden while he kept his look on the spot where he had poured the froth into the waves. Arndis followed his gaze to the shallows.

Something was there.

Translucent, rippling light, an idea of foam, seaweed and reeds.

Startled unearthly green eyes which latched themselves onto the boy with a malevolent glare.

“GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

She didn't know who she was shouting at. She didn't know what she was doing but she was flying down the lane as fast as her feet would carry her.

She saw the thing manifest itself into a man with wild, pale hair and an emerald green tunic. She saw him set foot on the shore.

She yelled so loud she could not discern her words any more. Juha jerked awake as the water man? thing? beast? ghost? came up to him in long, fluid strides. Clawed fingers reached for the boy who jerked out of reach and pressed himself at the sauna-wall.

She was running as fast as she could, slithering on loose gravel, her feet sinking into powdery sand. She was going to be too late!

“GET AWAY FROM HIM! GET BACK, _GET BACK!!_ ”

She was flailing her arms at the being, drawing its cold gaze onto herself but Juha was nearer and more tempting a target. The creature grabbed his arm. The boy let out a piercing scream.

“ _GET OFF!!”_

Uff! She careened into the creature with full speed, throwing it and herself off balance but severing the hold it had on the boy. Juha, thank all the gods, had enough wits to scramble back and Arndis just grabbed him by the waist and hurled them both into the sauna.

A stupid mistake, she immediately realized, as the small room had only one door. It was dark and cramped in there – but thankfully there was no fire.

“Up!”, she yelled at Juha. He instantly flew up to the top bench and pressed himself into a corner, too scared to cry.

She grabbed the handle to keep the door shut but a claw drove itself right through the wood as if through paper and without any apparent effort door, handle and door frame were just wrenched away from her grasp. She gasped as she saw the change which had come over the thing: the green eyes were still there but the rest was a mess of reed and water and mud and every step the thing did made it flow apart even further.

It oozed into the room.

Arndis backed away as far as she could but finally she felt the cold hearth at her back, and behind that was only the other wall.

Seaweed arms reached out for her, mother of pearl claws closed around her throat.

She plunged her knife into the thing but the effect was like thrusting it into sand.

 _This is it_ , she thought, too astonished to be frightened. _And the child is seeing it all._

Sudden impulse made her reach back into the cold hearth and grab a lump of coal in each hand.

' _Go away!_ ', she thought at the thing, because she had no air left to speak, and shoved the coals right into it's face. She didn't know why the black lumps were suddenly ablaze with fire, but the pain in her hands was excruciating.

 


	4. Noita

**Noita**

 

Her bandaged hands were useless for sailing. They would heal, eventually, Ensi had said and sent over for a better healer than her. The man had been small and wizened and utterly unimpressed with her background. He had whistled in astonishment though, when filled in on the matter of how Arndis had gotten her wounds.

“How did you manage that?”, he had asked.

Arndis had just answered that she would like to know that as well. Apparently, summoning fire from coals what not something people usually did for a first in magic-using.

Now she sat in the skiff again but this time Ensi was doing the sailing alone and no merchandise was piled in the hull between them.

The skin under her bandages itched like mad and Arndis would have loved to grab something fiercely, just because the ensuing pain would make her forget about it. But she contained herself with sitting in the prow and looking around her on the beautiful lake.

She still loved it.

She was learning so many things.

She still was terrified of the beings that made it their home, but, as far as it went humans might be as equally confusing and frightening to water people as they had been to her.

It had been a combination of fire, close proximity to the sauna – a generally magical place, as she was told – growing distance to the waterline and the magical powerhouse of the returning Ensi Hotakainen unleashing her wrath and fear that made the poor thing flee in seconds. Arndis suspected it was mainly Ensi's magic which dispelled the creature, but so far no one had been unkind enough to confirm it.

“Where are we going?”, she asked Ensi in a low voice.

The answer was a nod behind them where another of the countless small islets of Saimaa was gradually getting bigger. Arndis' eyes searched automatically for a sign of human occupation but found none, not even old hints that people might have lived here at one point or another. She stood at the sidelines when Ensi dragged the skiff on land, feeling useless yet again, and trudged along after the huntress when she waved her along. Just like the Maahinen-island this islet was small and covered in light birch forest, but it was nearly entirely flat and the trees spaciously set, so that they could see far in all directions. It was, Arndis guessed, as safe a place as you could find in the wild.

What Ensi showed to her though, barely ten metres further into the forest, was the stuff of nightmares. The ground was scuffed up and holes were strewn all around the forest floor and amidst all this was a small mound of beasts, Arndis surmised, even though it actually looked like a mound of contorted, in parts fur-covered flesh, that had been still alive when put into the mincing machine.

“Took me almost four days to wipe them out”, the Mage said with considerable pride in her voice. “Vermin and rodent beasts are real pests, because of numbers, agility and size. They stay small, you see.” She stopped and seemed to wait for something, all the while fixing Arndis with an expectant stare. “Aren't you going to write that down?”, she asked at last when no reaction was forthcoming from the younger woman.

“Oh! Yes! Of course! Uhm …” Frantic search produced Arndis' notebook and a pencil. “I was just not expecting you to help with my research …” She looked up at the tangle of limbs, gangrenous flesh and fur. “At least not in this way.”

“What? Did you think I would drag you around when I was _hunting_ beasts? I would not do that even with another immune person!”

“Yes, how stupid of me”, Arndis agreed with a flat voice and started to jot down what Ensi just had said. A random thought made her pause though. “Was that already your plan when you showed me the Maahinen?”, she asked.

“Yes”, came the reply. “I was asked to check the island for Rash-beasts on my way to the market and was attacked by it. My plan was to bury it on my way back home, and when you came along it seemed like providence.” Ensi shrugged non-committally and made a vague gesture back to the forest floor. Arndis spent the next hour noting down everything else Ensi had to say about rodent beasts. At one point they jogged back to the skiff for her camera and the huntress turned parts of the mess over for closer inspection and picture-taking. Having been exposed to the light for a day, the beasts were not contagious any more but they did not take any risks and Arndis took care to keep her distance. Over their lunch of bread, jam and hard-boiled eggs Arndis kept asking Ensi about the best ways to track and exterminate the various kinds of beasts. Later she watched Ensi clean the beasts' skulls for a Kallohonka and when witnessing the ritual underneath a great pine nearer to their home Arndis had exactly the feeling of power and commune she had always missed back in Iceland.

 

After that Ensi often vanished for two or three days altogether, scouting out and killing any useful specimen of troll or beast Arndis could use for her research. She always left them where she killed them but took Arndis on day trips to the various spots. In between the skald stayed at Aino's place and helped with the children and various tasks that made village-live with almost no access to modern technology a challenge. 

Autumn turned to winter, her hands were healed and the old wizened man stopped coming over. Sometime later they heard he had died in his sleep one evening. Arndis was sad at that. She had liked him and his quirks. He had always told her stories – of the old world and the new – when treating her wounds and although many of them had been sad or tragic, he always recounted his anecdotes in a way that helped to see the positive side of things.

When not going on expeditions with Ensi or helping in the village, she now wrote down as many of his stories as she remembered. In a way it was his legacy, but also the legacy of all Finns, who had seen their world slip by into darkness and despair and had refused to drown with it. Just as he had, she made a point of focussing on the lighter side of the tales.

The stillness of winter came over them when the lake froze.

With nowhere to row and the island bereft of its natural border, Ensi stayed at home, patrolling the lake, repairing boats and nets, wandering restlessly around, scouting out ways to get back to hunting, and, when Aino put her foot down, slinking away to teach Arndis some basic spells. The ice on Saimaa was thick enough by then that they could skate around the islets in the immediate area – Ensi always scouting ahead for threats or game but coming back regularly to check on how Arndis got along with her spells. Sometimes she brought back a brace of fowl or hares, sometimes new wounds from a scrabble with some beast.

This arrangement suited them just fine – Ensi was not the most patient of teachers, Arndis was not the most pliable of pupils. After half a lifetime of studying one kind of magic her mind was reeling with simple concepts of the other. She felt overwhelmed by the presence of magic all around her, of all the power which belonged to other beings than humans and into which she could tap, if she just asked for it. And out on the lake she looked at Ensi's straight back, the rifle next to her, the puukko on her hip and, no doubt, a mistrustful expression on her face and she asked herself how such a proud and independent woman still found it in her to be humble.

Shortly after she sang her first runo to Kuutar.

With spring equinox approaching Arndis cleaned up her notes and put them together with the films and the sketches she had made when running out of film for her camera into watertight boxes. There would be a market day in the south soon, on the long pier, and it would be her time to meet her colleagues again. Then she wrote some letters and packed her spare clothes.

Her heart nearly broke when she climbed into the skiff a few days later and sat down between pelts, salted fish and two lidded baskets with chicks. Their twittering and chirping was a joyful discord to the skald's heavy heartbeats. Ensi unfolded the sail and their boat took up speed. Arndis turned where she sat and waved to the people she had started to love as a surrogate family over the winter until her arms were threatening to fall off.

The boat ride was uneventful and quiet. Neither woman had much to say – one because her very nature was silent observation and the other because she had much to think about. Once the long pier came into view, somehow larger and more crowded than last time, Arndis stirred from her thoughts though.

“What will I do now?”, she asked Ensi flatly and got a confused look in return.

“Haven't you decided yet?”

Arndis bit her lip as she watched the pier for a moment. If she strained her eyes she could already make out individual persons and saw, even further off, the expedition's ship waiting for them to board and be carried off back to Iceland. She thought of her parents, back home on their farm. Then her gaze wandered away to the lake and its blue water, along its forested beaches, up to the sky. This land, it called to her.

“I have decided”, she said quietly. “But I'm afraid.”

Ensi said nothing. Maybe she hadn't heard.

 

~*~

 

The fox in the wicker basket was screaming. It was a sign of his vitality, his strength, but Ensi just wished he would shut up. It was not that she planned to kill him – but of course, he wouldn't know that – so he screamed and growled and snarled at her whenever his eyes met hers while Ensi calmly navigated the narrow waterways with her canoe. Reed brushed against her prow and her face, but she did not flinch or change her course.

Presently, as small wooden mooring pier emerged out of the thick greenery. She docked on it, sprang nimbly on the slippery wood and grabbed rifle and basket. The screaming from inside got even louder, threatening to tear vocal cords. Ensi sighed and wished she could do something to calm the animal down. But she decided that acting quickly would be the more beneficial course of action; the fox was young, still little more than a pup, he would get over the shock quickly enough. From the small pier several wooden walkways lead away into the marsh. Ensi took a look around and sprang away down one of the _pitkospuut_ , jumping over rotted parts of the planks, walking sure-footed through sunken areas.

Ahead the gangway ended on a small hillock where the dryer ground had allowed a thick overgrown population of gnarled firs and pines and the ground was padded with moss. The sun barely reached the ground here and cast the place under the tress in almost permanent shadow. Ensi sat the basket down, stepped back and opened the latch with her rifle. The fox pup shot out of his prison and was a streak of orange in this green and grey hall before he vanished with one great leap into the underbrush. In time his voice would join the choir of life around her, in time his pups would bolster the ranks of the immune. His progeny would live on, maybe here, maybe resettled on another island, but supported to the best of Ensi's ability and sheltered under Mielikki's hands.

The huntress took a deep breath and gazed for a moment longer at the place where the pup had vanished before she turned on the spot and walked away the way she had come.

 

~*~ the end ~*~

 


End file.
